


when i lay me down to sleep

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, also jamie is nurse catnip, drugged-up jamie hitting on people, i can't explain it but it's true okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 22:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13153332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: Jamie wakes up in a hospital room with his best mate. The only problem is, he's missing a few key memories about his life, and Stevie patiently waits for him to fill in the blanks.





	when i lay me down to sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flamingosarepink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamingosarepink/gifts).



> A Christmas present for tumblr user @donnerhall-darling, who is such a brilliant reader and always so supportive of me, as a writer and just as a person! I believe in your time zone, this should be up right before Christmas Day is over. I really pushed the time limits on this one!

Waking up is slow. There are moments, snippets he hears. A familiar voice, one he could identify if he was just thinking a little more clearly, one that causes a warm rush of affection to flow through him. There are other voices, too, some male, some female.

There’s the buzz of a television, the very specific buzz of a football match. He loves watching football. The muted roar of the crowd is relaxing, just the right sort of background noise, and the voices of the commentators are tolerable, even if just barely.

But then the sound drags him back down, like so many other nights he’d fallen asleep watching football, and he’s out again, even before he can make himself open his eyes. He hears that familiar voice again. It stays, the voice, the warmth of it, the familiar cadence of home, even around the crisp university-educated accents of the others. It makes him happy. He wants to tell it, but he can’t quite make himself.

He drags his eyes open once, and sunlight’s pouring through the windows. Stevie’s there too, holding his hand and watching something on telly.

He’s wearing a ring. Stevie doesn’t wear rings, Jamie thinks foggily. There’s only one ring he’d ever wear.

“She must be nice,” he says softly.

Stevie jumps a little, looking at him. “Who? Holly Willoughby? I’m sure she’s not too bad, I mean I don’t know her or anything—“

Jamie laughs, though it comes out as more of a croak.

“No. Your wife. She must be nice, to let you stay in here for hours with a mate.”

Stevie’s eyes fill with confusion, and he casts a cautious glance at the door, as if weighing up his options.

“He is,” he says finally, “he knows there’s nowhere else I could possibly be, J.”

It’s like ice in his veins, like his heart freezes in place. _He._

“Husband? You have a _husband?!”_

Stevie nods, squeezing his hand a little tighter. “They did tell me your memory might be a little fuzzy afterwards, but I didn’t expect this—“

“Do I know him?”

Stevie lets go of his hand, and Jamie misses it, can’t quite help but miss it. Stevie’d forgotten himself. That’s all it was. He’d forgotten he was married and gotten carried away and he was holding Jamie’s hand just because that’s what people did with people in hospital beds. You held their hands. Even if you were just friends.

Even if Jamie had been in love with him for years now. But Stevie was straight, of course, and he wouldn’t want to wreck a friendship over nothing. But he’d missed his shot. Stevie was married. To some lucky bastard who knew him in every single intimate way.

Jamie can imagine it. He can imagine them, together. It’s almost too easy to imagine, and it almost feels like—

—like memories.

“James,” Stevie says softly, “we’ve been married for a few years now.”

He takes Jamie’s other hand—his left, and shows him the gold band. He pulls it off and shows him the inside, the tiny engraving he’d chosen for him. They’d both chosen engravings for each other, he remembers suddenly, and he takes Stevie’s hand and pulls his ring off too, checking the inside of it and beaming.

“I forgot,” he says sheepishly, holding his arms out for a hug.

“Anesthesia will do that to you,” Stevie says softly, climbing into the bed and holding him tight.

“Now put that ring back on, J. Or the nurses will start getting ideas, they’ve always liked you.”

Jamie blinks at him. “So what if they do? Not like I’m going to leave my husband!” Stevie smiles, lips quirking upwards, and Jamie can see the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He’d always had lines in his forehead, ever since his twenties, but the grey edging in at his temples is—not _new_ , exactly, but he hadn’t quite noticed it like this before. There are dark shadows under his eyes, not quite as bad as after 2014, but not a good sign, by any means.

“Did you not sleep last night?” he asks gently, reaching out to touch Stevie’s cheek.

“Not well,” Stevie grumbles, “you try sleeping in a chair when you’re forty-five years of age. When I laid down, my back started hurting, and when I curled up, my knees got sore. Ended up crawling in here with you and spending the night with half my ass hanging off the side of the bed, about to fall off.”

Jamie beams and shifts over. “Come sleep now,” he says tenderly, “come sleep with me, husband.”

“You know you hit on me earlier?” Stevie says casually, “there was a nurse in here and you woke up and said you didn’t need any medicine, said my mouth was enough to heal anything. And then you asked for a blowjob to help you feel better, and the nurse said that wasn’t an approved treatment for acute appendicitis.”

Jamie flushes. “I was on drugs, I can’t be held responsible for that,” he whines, wrapping an arm—the one without an IV line, around Stevie and turning for a proper kiss. Stevie leans into it and they’d probably be scandalous if they weren’t washed up old footballers. “So. _Am_ I getting a blowjob to make me feel better?”

Stevie laughs. “Nah, mate. You owe me at least a dozen, though, for insisting on powering through until your appendix fucking _ruptured_. You could’ve been in and out of here in _two days_ , you know that? Instead we’re in here for a week, because your appendix exploded and you had all sorts of bacteria swimming around your stomach.”

Jamie does feel a bit of regret. “I thought it would pass,” he says quietly, “I am sorry I took it this far.”

“Do it again and you’ll wake up to divorce papers instead of your husband,” Stevie says, not quite joking. “You’re a fucking idiot, James.”

“I’m your idiot, though, and I’m just fine.” Stevie nods. “It doesn’t even hurt that much!”

“You’re hopped up on painkillers, Carra. That’s why you decided to ask if I’d suck you off in front of a roomful of doctors and nurses.”

Jamie can’t quite shake the guilt from before, though.

“I really am sorry, love. I should’ve asked you to take me to the doctor. Just I thought it wasn’t that bad, and you were away with the team, and I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You’re my husband, you idiot, you’re not a bother. If you’d needed me, I could’ve come home and you know my assistant manager’s just as capable. And even if he isn’t, who the fuck cares? Do you honestly think I’d care about losing a match when my husband’s in hospital?!”

“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was this serious, or I would’ve phoned you. Or at least taken myself to hospital.”

Stevie just sighs. “It’s fine. It’s all fine. As long as you’re okay, J, that’s all I care about and you know that.”

  
The next time he wakes, it’s midafternoon. He wakes properly this time, much more clear-headed. Stevie’s there, sitting with a cup of tea and talking on the phone to Jamie’s mum.

“No, he’s fine, Paula, he woke up, we talked, I yelled at him a bit for not phoning me sooner. Honestly, that son of yours—I love him to death, but I don’t know how he’s managed to make it this long, the way he just ignores his body—yeah, he was a little fuzzy, they told me to expect that. He forgot we were married, for a bit, told me I must have a nice wife to let me stay in hospital with him. You don’t know what goes through your mind, Paula, I suddenly saw us in one of those soaps Mum used to watch when I was a kid, with him having amnesia and all.” His mum must say something then, because Stevie laughs.

“I know. I’m mental for worrying about it when the doctors told me he might have some memory loss. You just go absolutely mental in that moment… But he’s okay. Sleeping off the morphine now, he’ll be discharged probably tonight, they’re giving me some pain pills for him, and he’ll be off from Sky for a little bit, unless they can give him a chair or something to sit on.”

They talk for a little while longer, and Jamie watches, smiling at he listens to the two people he loves most in the whole world talk to each other. His mum had always liked Stevie.

“Lemme talk to her,” he says quietly when Stevie’s about to hang up. Stevie starts at the unexpected sound.

“Your son’s been eavesdropping, I think,” he says lightly to Jamie’s mum, “he wants to talk to you. Bye from me then, Paula. Yeah, love you too.” Jamie takes the phone, and takes Stevie’s hand, too.

He talks to his mother for a little while and apologizes for being an idiot and promises he’ll rest and not push himself, and hangs up.

Stevie pauses, pulling away his blanket to check his bandages. “You’re gonna have a scar, they said,” he says softly.

“On my perfect body?” Jamie jokes, trying to hide his disappointment.

“It’s okay. Not like I’m gonna leave you for a younger, prettier model after this, love. And you’re still very handsome.”

“You dig the scars,” Jamie says with a grin, “you can admit it. You like a bad boy, don’t you, Steven!”

Stevie laughs and leans in to kiss him, fingers interlocking and Jamie can feel the warm metal of Stevie’s wedding band, and the staples of his appendectomy incision aside, everything in the world feels warm and right.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it! For other people for whom I've promised a present, please be patient with me! They are coming (or will be very soon!)


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